Above so much traditional stone housingsquatting into the mountainside,the football stadium and a hexagonal blanklike a heliport (the emptied plinthof a statue which surveyed far morethan it would ever command),we are stepping over shed fuel tanksto photograph the captured plane.

Downed in the Cold War,by whatever means, it sits nowon a lawn on the edge of a rampart,its turbine an empty mouth,its stripped-out cockpit open.We take turns to standwith kids on the wingwhile tourists from elsewherecount medieval cannon.

Not far west of Gjirokasterlies Hamara, Saranda, the Adriatic,beyond that the Mediterranean,and, beyond that, the Atlantic.Sometime in the 1950s,a Lockheed strayed off course.

Driving down white marbled streetswhere celebratory excuses are enoughfor men who shouldered state relicsall the way up to the citadel,we’re turning out onto the plain,disputed territory not that long ago,where old simplicities ended.